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Friday, December 9, 2011

Conspiracy theories abound and I am just adding to that – UNP leadership

There are interesting commentaries on who is behind what and who is actually at the wheel of the leadership contest. What is intriguing is, how I have heard that the Government is backing all the horses.Depending on who I talk to they say the Govt. is backing each of the horses, with reasoning. This is to create a state of total uncertainty which plays directly into the Government’s hand.

Then ones comes into each individual’s pontifications. The camp I have heard the most is that KJ is working the numbers and promising positions for backing him in the leadership. That is the carrot. It is rumored that Dayasiri will be given the National Organizer post he wants in return for his vote for KJ. It is expected that if a new leader is appointed, and if it is not Ranil it has to be Karu, then he will change the whole leadership from the Party Chairman, as he would want the same dictatorial powers that Ranil has, if he is to control and discipline the party to carry out his plan. He is also going to bring back his son-in-law Navin Dissanayake into a leadership position preferring to promote him to snooker Sajith in the event the latter becomes troublesome, a very likely occurrence given his short fuse. “evasilimathkama na”.

It is amazing how loyal some of Ranil’s people are to him. No matter what allegations are laid, they stand by the fact that he is the only man with the experience and knowledge known to handle the Rajapkses, knowing full well their weaknesses. As Ranil has no skeletons that have not been unearthed he can speak freely and feel completely at ease in that he has done nothing to take from this country what is not his, unlike most of the other leadership contenders and of course almost all in the government. Sajith has the most skeletons to be unearthed.

Ranil’s backers say that he has not changed, and he will not bend to anyone’s wishes just to get elected. This being his main fault, is now looking to those in the grassroots like his best trait. He does not want to lie to get the votes and therefore once the lies of the Rajapakses are exposed, he will be able to turn the tide, exposing the ‘satakaya sapaya’ for what it truly is a complete con to fool the public. As far as the tight control on media that the Govt. has today, a plan to bypass the traditional media and go direct to the public as a more effective way of communicating directly with the public will be needed.

The secret plan is for Sajith to try to get in through the back door, by eliminating KJ after the vote, and taking a default position, saying KJ does not have the electoral appeal and his age is also holding back the young people with political ambition. KJ is well aware of this and has already hatched a plan with the old guard to prevent this happening, and that the KJ camp would be in a position to keep control by enforcing loyalty with rewards and punishment.

Does anyone realize that in the event that KJ is voted in the leader there will be a huge defection of people from being active members. So only in the case where they are replaced by greater numbers of others will the party benefit from even this kind of leadership change.

In my opinion it is going from the frying pan into the fire as none of the 3 in contention can take the party FORWARD. There are others waiting in the wings for these contenders to fall on their swords before they declare their intentions.